


Happier (Aren't You?)

by cafephan



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: (kinda), Elements of fluff, Post-breakup, Reality, Songfic, elements of angst, if you know the song and read the prompt you'll get it i'm sure, third person perspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-19
Updated: 2017-03-19
Packaged: 2018-10-07 21:33:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10369923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cafephan/pseuds/cafephan
Summary: Filling the prompt: 'Can you write something to do with the new Ed Sheeran song happier? I was thinking in like the view of Dan's ex who's watching him fall in love with Phil?'





	

**Author's Note:**

> In case you haven't listened to Happier, [here is the link](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TpcBDJZsJA/) and I strongly advise listening to it as you read!

She’d known since a month before he left for university, when his hand couldn’t have held hers any looser, and she’d never felt more apart from him.

In the back of her mind, she knew Dan wasn’t happy. She’d taken it out on him, and he’d just taken it all without a word said in rebuttal. Arguments every night over the phone and in person, yet everyone in their town never saw them as anything less than idyllic.

Small town relationships sometimes just aren’t meant to last the distance.

She waves him off as he pulls off heading for Manchester, tears welling in her eyes, and she wonders if he’s crying too. She’s hurt him so much, she knows, said things she doesn’t mean, will never mean, and thrown accusations around that have no weight to them at all. But the feeling of knowing someone has fallen out of love with you when you’re still so in love with them isn’t exactly something one can take lightly.

He had still hugged her tightly and wished her the best for the future, apologised for things he hadn’t even done, and promised to keep in touch. Because that’s just the kind of person Dan has always been.

“It’s okay, Beth” her best friend Haleigh rubs her arm comfortingly, and Beth turns to cry into Haleigh’s shoulder.

Her phone doesn’t buzz at all that night.

\--

Dan invites her along with a small group of other old friends to visit his dorm a month later, when he’s fully settled in.

Haleigh squeezes her hand as Dan opens the door to greet them, immediately thrown into a jovial group hug before all of them pack into the tight space.

He pulls Beth into a hug and asks if she is okay and happy, and of course she lies. It’s been the longest month of her life and she has a million things on the tip of her tongue she’s dying to say and confess, but not whilst everyone is around. And not whilst Dan has the biggest smile on his lips as he looks down at his phone a couple of minutes later.

“Who are you texting, Howell? We’re all right here!” someone jokes, and Dan laughs and holds up his hands in surrender.

“Just Phil” he replies, the smile never once faltering.

Beth takes a deep breath and smiles back at him.

She’d noticed during their time together before the breakup that Dan had spent more and more time watching Phil’s videos, sometimes he’d rope her into watching them with him, though she never really cared all that much. She appreciated Phil’s humour and striking charisma, but nowhere near to the extent Dan did, he always seemed positively captivated from the second Phil’s face appeared onscreen.

She knows they’ve met at least once now, Dan had posted it all over facebook. In the pictures he posted, they wore matching smiles as wide as the Manchester skyline.

It made sense they got on so well, Dan always said that they would should they ever meet. Beth knows he deserves a friendship like that.

That night they all get drunk and pass out in the tiny dorm room. Beth is slumped against the wall, eyes batting closed, but her gaze is stolen to the corner of the room, where Dan is laid stomach down on the bed, the glare of his phone lighting up his smiling face, eagerly typing away.

She falls asleep with her thoughts weighing down on her, interrupted only by the soft snores of her friends and the occasional stifled giggle from the corner of the room.

\--

Haleigh starts university a year later, also in Manchester.

Her flat is close to Dan’s new flat which he now shares with Phil, she has always kept up to date with his life, even though it is against her own better judgment as well as Haleigh’s – she has been told that she’ll be happy one day too more times than she could count.

She knows when she was truly happy.

She’s heading back with dinner when she turns the corner and happens to glance across the road. She’d scoff if she wasn’t so sure the universe had some kind of grudge against her.

Phil has his arm around Dan’s shoulders and Dan links their fingers together, and Beth is positive she’s never seen him smile so wide as when he looks up at Phil.

Phil leans in to whisper something and Dan cracks up laughing, throwing his head back and all, and Beth feels like she’s been punched in the gut. But she can’t find herself to be at all resentful even though Haleigh will insist she had every right to be, because she wants nothing more than for Dan to smile like that. She just, deep down, wishes it would be with her.

She watches as Dan leans up slightly to kiss Phil, wrapping his arms around the slightly taller boy’s neck, and she is positive she’s never seen Dan’s eyes so bright and sparkling when they eventually part.

She watches them walk the opposite way, their hands tightly holding each other and swinging between them.

And when Dan texts her that night to ask if she’s still in Manchester and wants to meet up for breakfast, she lies. She can’t bring herself to face that smile when she knows that she will never be the one to cause it.

\--

One night she finds herself clicking through his channel, watching random videos. She’s lied to anyone that asks and says she’s ill, but instead she has the fairy lights lit that Dan had bought her for her seventeenth birthday, and is wrapped up in a suddenly very empty double bed.

Her breath catches in her throat whenever she clicks on a video with both Dan and Phil in the thumbnail, though she always knows what to expect. It brings her a bittersweet kind of feeling.

_“Hey Dan,” Phil says, his arms behind his back off-camera._

_“Yes?”_

_“I’ve got you a present” Phil brings a wrapped package from behind his back and holds it up in shot._

_Dan stares at it for a second then his gaze meets Phil’s. “Right now?”_

_“Yeah,” Phil looks at the camera, “Dan’s gonna open his Christmas present on the video.”_

_“… Okay” Dan carefully takes the present, and laughs nervously._

Beth thinks she is being perceptive and particularly observant, but as she scrolls into the comments (which is a grave mistake for her still hurting heart) pretty much everyone has picked up on the nervousness too, there are a multitude of theories why.

She knows that, during the time that they were together at least, Dan hated being put on the spot like that. He’d never liked not being in control of a situation. But with her, he’d protested and refused to go through with whatever impromptu surprises were thrown at him. With Phil it seems as if he’d willingly go along with anything.

_“Make sure they can see,” Phil instructs and Dan does so. “I thought you would like it.”_

Beth can see the wonderment in Dan’s eyes as he quickens his unwrapping, and her gut instinct tells her that it’s not because of the present, it’s because of the present giver. She swallows thickly and continues watching as Dan pulls out a Robert Pattinson mask and the two break down into hysterical laughter, and the bond between them practically resonates through the camera.

She swallows again and pauses the video, and finds herself scrolling the cursor over to the top recommended video, again with both Dan and Phil in the thumbnail, matching cat whiskers drawn on their faces.

A momentary smile creeps on her lips as a younger looking Dan pops onto the screen, but it feels like a kick to her stomach when she realises it was uploaded mere days after she visited Dan at his dorm. When everything was still so fresh and raw.

For her, at least, it still is.

_“This was the most fun I’ve ever had…” Dan says, looking off-camera wistfully before making eye contact with the camera._

_Phil suddenly leaps on him and tackles him to the ground, and they both laugh heartily._

_The clip ends abruptly with a jumpcut._

She watches the video with a heavy heart, and by the end she just knows she’s crying, yet refuses to admit it to herself.

She picks up her phone and hovers over Dan’s contact, and her fingers twitch as every nerve in her body screams at her to just call.

But she doesn’t.

\--

She makes the mistake of posting about her new job online a few weeks later.

_Congrats on the new job! :)_

Her breath catches in her throat as the text from Dan comes through. She knows that she shouldn’t still be feeling anything more than friendship, but the heart wants what it wants – at least that’s what she’s been telling everyone who has been telling her to move on if she wants to be happy.

_Thanks!_

She nods, satisfied with her breezy response, and busies herself with picking out tomorrow’s outfit and makeup, so she isn’t staring at her phone, willing for it to buzz.

When it does buzz a few minutes later, however, she quite literally drops everything and dives onto the bed to read it.

_It’s been so long, want to come over to the flat and catch up tonight??? Billy came over last week and he says that a lot’s been going on with you!_

She sighs in frustration, fucking Billy and his big mouth. It’s not even true, she’s not done anything worthy of noting. Just continued to mope around her flat and sleep an unnatural amount of hours.

Her first instinct is to ask if Phil will be there, but she refrains.

She spends far too long redrafting a response, and she knows it isn’t normal. Without sounding like an utterly laughable cliché she doesn’t really know what normal is.

When Dan’s contact flashes onscreen as an incoming call she wastes no time in pressing accept and kicks herself at how it must seem.

“Hello?” she prays to any higher power she doesn’t sound too excited and desperate, even though she is both of those things and she wishes she wasn’t.

“Hey,” he replies, and Beth squeezes her eyes shut and runs a hand through her hair, “I thought I’d call because you didn’t reply and for some reason some of my texts aren’t sending so I thought I’d check.”

“Why don’t you just get a new phone?” she asks.

Dan laughs, and Beth feels a pain in her stomach. “Yeah, Phil keeps saying I should.”

The way he says Phil’s name makes her heart sink. She’s never heard him sound so bright and cheerful. Except for in his videos. That he shoots with Phil.

But she still feels no resentment.

“But anyway,” he says, and Beth wonders how long she’s remained silent, lost in her own thoughts. “Do you want to come over?”

She agrees without thinking and curses herself for it, and he relays his address and she promises to set off as soon as they hang up, and she sighs as she grabs her coat and leaves the flat.

\--

Dan greets her with a warm hug and invites her inside.

The flat is welcoming, decorated in a way that just screams Dan, and Beth can’t help but smile, she’s missed him more than she’s been willing to admit to herself.

“So tell me everything’s that’s new with you!” he prompts as they sit on the sofa, a bowl of chocolates on the table in front of them (“Phil insisted I had to be an amazing host”).

They’ve been chatting for about an hour, swapping stories and reminiscing about old times, when a key jiggles in the lock and Beth hears Dan gasp slightly, and he immediately spins to face the door.

“I’m home!” Phil sings, and Dan’s smile grows.

Beth smiles too.

“Beth’s here,” Dan says, and Phil immediately rushes over to apologise for not acknowledging her sooner, and for arriving home earlier than planned.

“It’s so nice to meet you!” Phil smiles and Beth returns it, though there’s an undeniable sinking feeling when she watches Dan and Phil make eye contact.

She reminds herself that _she_ was the one that fucked things up in the first place, but it has never helped the hurt.

Phil gently squeezes Dan’s shoulder as he passes, and Dan smiles up at him.

“I’ll be in my room editing if you need me” he states, and Dan nods before Phil leaves them alone once again.

Dan’s left with a faint smile on his lips for the rest of the conversation.

She’s sat with her back to the kitchen a few hours later, Dan sat opposite her.

She hears sounds behind her a half hour or so later, the clattering of pots and pans from someone clearly trying to be silent but failing completely, and Dan leans to the side to find the source of it.

“Sorry!” Phil calls, and Dan breaks into a grin.

Beth watches as Dan’s gaze follows Phil out of the room, and there’s a look on his face that Beth can’t help but wish he’d have given to her.

“Are you happy?” she hears herself ask, playing with her fingers in her lap.

The questions takes Dan by surprise slightly, and he seems to toss the question around in his mind for a while. He bites his lip, a telltale sign he’s deep in thought, and his gaze immediately flicks to where Phil had left the room.

When she’d asked him the question back when they were together, he’d always say ‘I hope one day I will be’, and it’d break her heart every single time. She’d tried to kiss away his doubts on multiple occasions, but looking back she doubts if she ever succeeded.

Beth hears a door swing behind her and padding into the kitchen, and Dan’s gaze is immediately stolen from her again.

“Yeah,” his voice is steady and unwavering, and his lips twitch at the corners, “Yeah, I think I am.”    

\--

The next couple of years mark sporadic texts, infrequent messages into the old group of friends’ group chat, and limited contact in general.

Beth watches as Dan and Phil’s lives snowball in the form of presenting gigs, a book, a tour, documentaries to name but a few achievements, and though she’s proud of and happy for them, a big part of her wonders how different things would be if Dan would have stayed with her in Wokingham back in the day, but those thoughts always dwindle into nothing when she realises how selfish she’s being.

She’s well on the ladder in her career and has a nice boyfriend across town, she’s happy. She wonders if she’d be happier if life had taken a different turn, but she knows that he’s happier with Phil than he ever would be with her.

And when an ivory envelope is pushed through her letterbox and rests on the plush doormat, she picks up the letters around it and stares down at it.

She knows straight away. She recognises the handwriting and she knows what is inside, it’s obvious. She catches their videos from time to time, and she knows the theories their fans have. She recognises the way he looks at Phil even when none of them realise it’s happening, and she remembers when people in school told her he looked at her the same way. But they’re stronger than she and Dan ever were, it’s unfaltering. The mutual friends that he speaks to more regularly than he speaks to her have told her what he’s said. He’s in love, and he finally understands real love.

And she knows it’s what is contained inside that envelope, inviting her to witness the two men in matrimony in a few months’ time. 

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed the fic! I haven't posted a oneshot in a month so i'm really nervous about how this will go down, but as soon as I saw this prompt I just had to write it because i'm absolutely in love with Divide and it was too good to ignore!
> 
> Please leave a kudos if you liked it and leave a comment letting me know what you thought it, and share it around if you think it's worthy enough :)
> 
> [Tumblr](http://cafephan.tumblr.com/) // [Twitter](http://twitter.com/bloggerhowell/)


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